An exciting new chapter at Cork brewery and distillery

BLACKS of Kinsale was established in 2013 by husband-and-wife duo Sam and Maudeline Black.

Starting with a homebrew kit gifted to Sam for Valentine’s Day by Maudeline, the brewery grew its reputation for quality craft beers and went on to become Ireland’s first co-located brewery and distillery.

In December, 2023, the dream of opening their own state-of the-art brewery and distillery in Kinsale, wholly owned by them, came true. Housed on three acres of land beside the Bandon River estuary, the site had formerly been used to manufacture boats, t-shirts, and TVRs.

On the original footprint of the old building, Sam and Maudeline have overseen completion of the first phase of this redevelopment project, which includes a production hall housing a fully operational brewery and distillery that’s three times the size of the previous one.

There’s also a funkily turned-out bar, new offices for all the staff, and very soon a menu of tours, tasting experiences and events.

I caught up with Sam and Maudeline to find out what this new milestone means to them, the business, the local community, and their future plans.

“This phase of development included the production hall, setting up the brewery equipment and stills for making whiskey, gin and rum. It’s completed and we’re fully up and running and operational,” says Sam.

He and Maudeline both describe brewing as the bread and butter of the Blacks operation. The fast turnaround of new beers is the antithesis of the whiskey side of their business – a beer can be ready to sell in a couple of weeks, in contrast to the minimum maturation period of three years (and a day) for Irish whiskey.

The beer pays the bills, keeps the lights on, but whiskey is where we see the longer-term investment. 

"Things we’re putting into casks now are not Irish whiskey legally for three years, and whatever we make tomorrow is going to be at least five years before we see any return,” says Sam.

The stills housed in the new location were in operation at the old site, and there is currently two-years’ worth of production “laid down” to mature, says Maudeline, and this will be continually added to as whiskey, and spirits in general, become a big focus for Blacks because of its export potential.

“The export market [for spirits] is much wider than the domestic market,” Sam says. “There are no shelf-life issues like there is with beer, and Irish whiskey is popular all over the world. Because it has to be made in Ireland, we’re not competing against a cheap product in another country. There’s more of a level playing field in some ways to compete in a global market for that product.”

That being sad, craft beer is where everything started for Blacks, and even without kitting out the brewery to its full capacity, there can be up to 100,000 litres of beer moving through the system when all the tanks are full.

And with more space comes the ability to can, bottle and store on site, which opens the possibility for greater experimentation with their beers, and an even greater embrace of that maverick spirit Sam and Maudeline have built the reputation of the business on.

“It’s a massive milestone for us,” says Sam. “Not just that we have a state-of-the-art production equipment in a state-of-the-art building that fulfils all our needs, but it’s ours as well – we’re not renting it from anyone, there’s no pressure on leases or what we’re doing here, so that’s a totally different feeling.”

“We were always doing new beers and we took that into making our whiskey in terms of always playing with recipes,” says Maudeline.

“I feel that’s in our DNA, to experiment and have a maverick approach to the flavours that are in our beers and spirits. We can push that maverick DNA again into the way we give our tours and communicate our story even better.”

The ability to can their own beers in-house means the world is their oyster for experimentation with flavours and beer styles.

“We’re not tied to a big production volume to fill a tank to send it off to be canned,” says Sam. 

Instead, we can decide to do just 50 cases of a beer in cans, have a couple of kegs for our bar and a couple of speciality bars. 

"Then we can do more unusual beers on rotation; we can put it into the online shop or people can come into the brewery to try it, but we’re not tied to making hundreds of cases and then wondering is there really a market for something like a pineapple sour! We can be as mad as we want, and if it works – it works.”

The on-site bar is therefore not just a pretty add-on to the brewery. It serves as a functional space where enjoyment and tasting are coupled with serious consumer testing of new beers.

“It’s like a live lab,” says Maudeline. “We could do three different types of stout and we don’t even have to ask what people liked because we’ll be able to see immediately which one sells best, and that’s the one to go ahead with.

We do that with our gins as well. Each gin has its own name and is packaged with a different look and feel: Black Beak, Juniper Tempest, Citrus Smash, and Apple and Kiwi.

The bar opened for the official launch of the new site in December and will reopen again for St Patrick’s Day. Open to the public, seven days a week, the bar is open to all – whether you book in for a tour, a tasting experience, or just want to hang out and try a flight of beers, whiskeys, gins, or award-winning rums.

At the opening, Maudeline says the reception was really positive, and a long-awaited opportunity for Blacks to give back and show appreciation for the support of the wider Kinsale community.

“The first day we opened, we didn’t know if anyone would come, but there was a great response. People can see how invested we are in Kinsale as a business as opposed to how important the town is to us.

“In turn, we’re getting that hug back from them and they appreciate what we’re doing. It was lovely, and the whole month continued liked that,” says Maudeline.

For the last ten years, this was always the pipe-dream, so to get to this point has been great. It’s always been important to us to give back to the community, and we can do that now, and I feel like we have somewhere for people to be proud of; that Black’s is made here, in Kinsale.

There is more building and expansion to come, with another two phases of development planned to create a purpose-built visitors’ experience, another much bigger bar complete with on-site restaurant, and a retail area, all due for completion by March, 2025.

The good news is tours will commence this year from April. Ever the mavericks of experimentation, the interim visitor experience will be housed in a bespoke-made container craned into position alongside the brewery entrance.

An exciting addition is a large overhead gantry, providing visitors with an immersive experience of the sites, smells and sounds of a working brewery and distillery from a unique position: overhead.

“Visitors will get up close to everything, but without being around the equipment on the floor,” says Sam. “A tour guide will take visitors through the experience and onto a whiskey tasting.

“If visitors want to taste more of what we do, they can come into the bar and have a flight of beers, gins, or rums as an add-on experience.”

The 40-minute tour will run daily from April 1 between 11am and 4pm, all bookable through the Blacks of Kinsale website. The bar is open to the public with normal pub hours.

A regular Local Link bus shuttles between central Kinsale and Blacks, and a flat walkway for pedestrians and cyclists along the same route ensures ease of access for everyone.

But back to where it all started: beer, and there are plans to innovate as well as celebrate some of Blacks back catalogue, too.

“We have a brew plan for specials for the year, which will start off with some old classics. We’ve done over 100 different beers between draught and packaged over the years, so about half the specials will be ones we’ve done before like Ace of Haze (a Hazy IPA), a 3% Session IPA which was always popular, and a coconut stout called Cult of the Coconut which was really good so that will definitely be making a comeback,” says Sam.

“We’re always looking for new hop varieties and if we can incorporate that into a brew, so definitely a couple of single varietal hop IPAs with new hops coming out this year.

“We’ll do a sour beer, our World’s End chocolate and vanilla stout, which will brew towards the end of the year, so we’ve got a lot of different things to pick from there.”

On top of this, there is the ongoing programme of barrel-aging beers and finishing whiskeys in beer-seasoned barrels, too.

“Stouts are ideal for whiskey aging in barrels, so there will be an eight-year-old single malt and an eight-year-old single grain World’s End Whiskey aged in a World’s End stout-seasoned barrel, and that’ll keep us excited!”

Their biggest selling beer remains the KPA (Kinsale Pale Ale).

“It’s a beer people drink regularly, if they like pale ales and American hops it ticks all the boxes and is still out most popular,” Sam says.

Production on both the beer and whiskey sides will be busy this year, feeding into the many ways visitors can engage with all of that offering through tours, rotational beers and freewheeling cocktails in the bar, but also through a programme of events throughout the year. These include a beer and whiskey festival in mid-summer showcasing beers and whiskeys from all over Ireland with food and local bands, as well as taking part in Kinsale Arts Week in July.

www.blacksbrewery.com